This morning, I had an item on the Dalai Lama, who, asked yesterday to name a leader to admire, named President Bush. And at the end of the item, I wrote,

In my experience — and I’m just generalizing here — the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush. Certainly the less snarky and narrow. Most of the people I admire most, admire the 43rd president. (Please note that I said “most of the people,” not “all of the people.”) This is particularly true of those who know something about tyranny, and the need to resist it: e.g., the Dalai Lama.

Would you like a taste of reader mail?

I’m really glad that I don’t know you or any of these people. Please stay away, as I fear you and your ilk are a genuine danger to this country. That somehow liking George W. Bush could in any way be a good attribute for a person to have is just warped, twisted and wrong. You are evil and so are all your friends, and what makes you so dangerous is that you don’t have a clue as to how damaged you really are.

As George W. Bush once remarked, when someone flipped him the middle finger, “Not a fan.” This letter comes from Maple Grove, Minn., a lovely-sounding town. But it could easily come from my hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich., where a great many thought — “thought” — like this. It reminds me of what I rebelled against, following the injunction of the bumper sticker to “question authority.”

And there is one thing I have wondered, for lo these many years: How is it that conservative Republicans have been labeled “haters,” who are “mean-spirited”? I guess everything depends on who is doing the labeling . . .

P.S. Is it illegitimate to publish mail like the above, from your political opposition? Yes, it is — except, perhaps, when such mail is representative. I don’t say that 100 percent of my negative mail is as bad as the above letter. And I don’t say that 75 percent is. But half? Yes, comfortably (so to speak). During the fall presidential campaign, some “Obamacons” said, over and over and over, that they could use a better class of negative mail. Well, so could some of the rest of us.